Seattle City Council votes 9-0 for scaled-down head tax on large employers

Seattle Times ^ | 14May18 | Day & Beekman

[qaz123]

After a weekend of high-stakes negotiations between Seattle City Council members and Mayor Jenny Durkan, the council voted unanimously Monday to tax the city’s largest employers to help address homelessness.

Starting next year, the tax will be $275 per employee, per year on for-profit companies that gross at least $20 million per year in the city — down from a $500-per-head proposal that Durkan threatened to veto.

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Having paused construction planning on an office tower over the larger proposal, Amazon now will move ahead with it, a spokesman said after the vote. But the company’s plans to occupy a skyscraper under construction are still up the air, he said.

“We are disappointed by today’s City Council decision to introduce a tax on jobs,” spokesman Drew Herdener said in a statement

[outpostinmass2]

“decided that shelters would be opened all over the city, in the trendiest, hipsterish, upper liberal middle class, rich liberal neighborhoods. Those people would be storming city hall with pitchforks and torches.”

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When was the last time you visited Seattle? Homeless are on every street corner, tents in every park and under bridges. In good neighborhoods. I don’t understand how or why anyone would own a home there. Honolulu went through a period like this and eventually the people had enough and the city took down the tents. I don’t know how far gone Seattle people are and what it will take to reverse their course.

[sheana]

I think it’s funny. Remember the old mark line of...he saw you coming? The Seattle council members.....saw Amazon coming.

[cyclotic]

Sure it can be done. In many cases there are stand alone machines. In the case of the company I work for, there are miles of pipe and plenums feeding raw materials from tanks to mixers. It’s amazingly complex.

[Desron13]

"Then the “Good Idea Fairy” will show up again and come up with another disastrous idea."

It's like a sickness with these clowns. I do believe that they really cant help themselves.

[American in Israel]

Only thing I disagree with is that the SWJ want to take OUR toys and go home.

[Renkluaf]

Philly implemented a “Wage Tax” in 1939 will all the good intentions in the world. Since the 1960s, they’ve lost more than 300,000 jobs as employers went to the burbs. Somewhere in the 1990s, they started trying to reduce it but to no avail.

[qaz123]

Damn near impossible to fix, Stupid, isn’t it?